The weather, that is.
Spring has obviously come after a really long winter. All of a sudden, the weather has been really dramatic.
Thursday, May 21, 2020
Wednesday, May 20, 2020
Venustiano Carranza assassinated . . .
on this day in 1920, by officers who had betrayed him, pretending to offer him a safe lodging for the night in the town of Tlaxcalantongo. Sometime during the night, their forces surrounded the house and then opened fire into ito. Oddly, the assassins then telegramed Obregon to inform him that "we are at your service" but also asked for permission to bring Carranza's body to Mexico City for burial. Obregon replied with the comment "It is very strange that a group of officers who vouched their loyalty and honor should have permitted him to be assassinated instead of complying with your duty."
The actual killing may have been the next day, May 21, early in the morning and the story exceedingly confused. What seems to be the case is that a party of Mexican soldiers under Rodolfo Herrero and his brother Hermilo approached Carranza's party as defectors, and offered them a refuge for the night. Sometime during the night Rodolfo removed himself and then sometime during the morning the troops opened fire on the house Carranza was in. Carranza was hit in the leg, which may explain his last words, "Lawyer, they have already broken one of my legs", recorded. This seems to have referred however to a colleague who was similarly ambushed. The conventional story is that he died of his other wounds. Some claimed, however, including some who were immediate witness to the events, that Carranza actually killed himself after being wounded and that the intent of the troops was to capture, not kill, Carranza.
The leader of the party of assassins, Rodolfo Herrero, was prosecuted for murder, but acquitted, but was cashiered from the Mexican army. During the presidency of Obregon, he was reinstated as a general only to be dismissed again in 1937.
In any event, it showed how really far gone things had become.
Carranza had, of course, risen to leadership of Mexico in the second stage of the Mexican Revolution, which at that point was frankly not so much of a revolution as it was a civil war. Modero had prevailed over Diaz, but then he'd gone down in a military coup to Huerta, as we recall. After that, the backers and admirers of Modero had risen up against the military regime that Huerta imposed and defeated him, but that was soon followed by the third stage of the revolution in which Zapata and Villa, and their supporters, struggled against Carranza.
They really won. They entered Mexico City and a new Mexican civil government was installed. Carranza was holed up in Vera Cruz and could have been wiped out, but instead Zapata, who was a regionalist at heart, and who was disenchanted with Villa, went home. Without Zapata to aid him, Villa was pushed out by forces loyal to Carranza and a long struggle against both Villa and Zapata ensued.
That resulted in Zapata being assassinated on April 10, 1919 as Mexico headed towards elections in 1920.
The passing of Zapata effectively doomed any chance of a liberal Mexican democracy emerging from the Mexican Revolution.
Carranza was from a privileged family that was involved in cattle ranching. His father had twice served in successful Mexican revolutionary armies and so the family had that heritage. Carranza himself had hoped to become a doctor, but an eye disease prevented that from occuring so upon completion of school he returned home and commenced ranching himself. He soon entered politics with his family's support and stood for the election to the position of the of Coahuila in 1908. He did not secure that position as he lacked the backing of Diaz for reasons that are unclear.
In Modero's revolution of 1909 Modero named him as a regional commander but he failed to act upon the appointment. He none the less became Minister of War under Modero and then Governor of Coahuila. Upon Modero's assassination he went into rebellion against Huerta and rose to the senior position of the forces opposing Huerta. He thereafter was the head of the Constituionalist government of Mexico after he entered Mexico City with the support of Obregon, one of the three major commanders of the Mexican Revolution, in August 1914.
Soon thereafter two of those commanders, Zapata and Villa, were at war with Carranza and Obregon. In spite of a condition of civil war existing, he was basically recognized by the United States as Mexico's official head of state and he was elevated by the Constitutionalist to the presidency in 1917. Woodrow Wilson treated his government as the official one and effectively aided it, as we've addressed before, in the war against Villa, an event which lead to the 1916 Columbus New Mexico raid. Ironically, Carranza had a strong distaste for the United States and was far from a friend to its interest. The resulting intervention by the U.S. in pursuit of Villa nearly brought the United States into a state of war with Mexico.
Carranza chose not to run for a second term as president in 1920 but instead of endorsing his long time supporter Obregon he endorsed another figure who had served as a diplomat for him in Washington D. C.. The decision was based on his not wanting to have military figures rise to head of state, but Carranza's supporters commenced violent actions against Obregon's, up to and including murder. By April of 1920 Obregon was in rebellion against Carranza and Carranza was repeating his earlier move of retreating towards Vera Cruz. Rebel forces caught up with him and he was killed on this date. His alleged killer was put on trial by a victorious Obregon, but was acquitted.
The entire serious of events put Mexico firmly on a radical path, which Carranza himself had started. Obregon would further it. Democracy in Mexico was dead.
The actual killing may have been the next day, May 21, early in the morning and the story exceedingly confused. What seems to be the case is that a party of Mexican soldiers under Rodolfo Herrero and his brother Hermilo approached Carranza's party as defectors, and offered them a refuge for the night. Sometime during the night Rodolfo removed himself and then sometime during the morning the troops opened fire on the house Carranza was in. Carranza was hit in the leg, which may explain his last words, "Lawyer, they have already broken one of my legs", recorded. This seems to have referred however to a colleague who was similarly ambushed. The conventional story is that he died of his other wounds. Some claimed, however, including some who were immediate witness to the events, that Carranza actually killed himself after being wounded and that the intent of the troops was to capture, not kill, Carranza.
The leader of the party of assassins, Rodolfo Herrero, was prosecuted for murder, but acquitted, but was cashiered from the Mexican army. During the presidency of Obregon, he was reinstated as a general only to be dismissed again in 1937.
In any event, it showed how really far gone things had become.
Carranza had, of course, risen to leadership of Mexico in the second stage of the Mexican Revolution, which at that point was frankly not so much of a revolution as it was a civil war. Modero had prevailed over Diaz, but then he'd gone down in a military coup to Huerta, as we recall. After that, the backers and admirers of Modero had risen up against the military regime that Huerta imposed and defeated him, but that was soon followed by the third stage of the revolution in which Zapata and Villa, and their supporters, struggled against Carranza.
They really won. They entered Mexico City and a new Mexican civil government was installed. Carranza was holed up in Vera Cruz and could have been wiped out, but instead Zapata, who was a regionalist at heart, and who was disenchanted with Villa, went home. Without Zapata to aid him, Villa was pushed out by forces loyal to Carranza and a long struggle against both Villa and Zapata ensued.
That resulted in Zapata being assassinated on April 10, 1919 as Mexico headed towards elections in 1920.
The passing of Zapata effectively doomed any chance of a liberal Mexican democracy emerging from the Mexican Revolution.
Carranza was from a privileged family that was involved in cattle ranching. His father had twice served in successful Mexican revolutionary armies and so the family had that heritage. Carranza himself had hoped to become a doctor, but an eye disease prevented that from occuring so upon completion of school he returned home and commenced ranching himself. He soon entered politics with his family's support and stood for the election to the position of the of Coahuila in 1908. He did not secure that position as he lacked the backing of Diaz for reasons that are unclear.
In Modero's revolution of 1909 Modero named him as a regional commander but he failed to act upon the appointment. He none the less became Minister of War under Modero and then Governor of Coahuila. Upon Modero's assassination he went into rebellion against Huerta and rose to the senior position of the forces opposing Huerta. He thereafter was the head of the Constituionalist government of Mexico after he entered Mexico City with the support of Obregon, one of the three major commanders of the Mexican Revolution, in August 1914.
Soon thereafter two of those commanders, Zapata and Villa, were at war with Carranza and Obregon. In spite of a condition of civil war existing, he was basically recognized by the United States as Mexico's official head of state and he was elevated by the Constitutionalist to the presidency in 1917. Woodrow Wilson treated his government as the official one and effectively aided it, as we've addressed before, in the war against Villa, an event which lead to the 1916 Columbus New Mexico raid. Ironically, Carranza had a strong distaste for the United States and was far from a friend to its interest. The resulting intervention by the U.S. in pursuit of Villa nearly brought the United States into a state of war with Mexico.
Carranza chose not to run for a second term as president in 1920 but instead of endorsing his long time supporter Obregon he endorsed another figure who had served as a diplomat for him in Washington D. C.. The decision was based on his not wanting to have military figures rise to head of state, but Carranza's supporters commenced violent actions against Obregon's, up to and including murder. By April of 1920 Obregon was in rebellion against Carranza and Carranza was repeating his earlier move of retreating towards Vera Cruz. Rebel forces caught up with him and he was killed on this date. His alleged killer was put on trial by a victorious Obregon, but was acquitted.
The entire serious of events put Mexico firmly on a radical path, which Carranza himself had started. Obregon would further it. Democracy in Mexico was dead.
Tuesday, May 19, 2020
Monday, May 18, 2020
May 18, 1920. Future Popes, Equine Events, and Middle Eastern Wars.
Karol Józef Wojtyła, was born to Emilia and Karol Wojtyla in Wadlowice, Poland.
St. Pope John Paul II's parents at the time of their wedding. They are both presently candidates for sainthood.
He'd become St. John Paul II the Great, the most influential Pope of the second half of the 20th Century.
His early life was hard, in a country where life itself was hard. His mother, who was a school teacher, died when he was 8 years old. His deeply religious father was first an NCO, prior to his birth, in the Austro Hungarian Army and then a Captain in the Polish Army. Upon his wife's death he worked close to home so that he could care for his young child.
His father died of a heart attack Polish in 1941. His eldest brother, with whom he was close, died of scarlet fever after attended to scarlet fever victims in the early 1930s. Upon his father's death he was the only immediately surviving member of the family.
He entered the seminary secretly during World War Two, the Germans had closed them in Poland, and was ordained in Soviet occupied Poland in 1946.
He ultimately rose to become Pope in 1978, and occupied that position until his death in 2005. Since that time he has had two successors, with the first perhaps ironically being German, thereby creating the odd situation of a Pope who lived under German occupation during World War Two being succeeded by one who had briefly been in the German armed forces (anti aircraft gun crewman) as a very young man at the end of the war.
The National Horse Show was going on in Washington D.C.
General Pershing's personal mounts Entered in the National Capitol Horse Show which opened today. On the left is Col. John G. Quekemeyer with "Jeff" and on the Right Lt. W.J. Cunningham with "John Bunny".
Col. John G. Quekemeyer and Lt. James H. Cunningham taking the jumps on Princess and Dandy, at the National Capitol Horse Show. These two hunters were presented by the English Government to General Pershings Staff and are entered with the string of A.E.F. Horses.
And Man O War, who had not run in the Kentucky Derby, won the Preakness.
Another event involving a lot of horses was the Battle of Hamdh, which occurred on this day in 1920. The battle pitted the Ikhwan, the putative National Guard of Saudi Arabia, against Kuwaiti forces. The distribution of manpower was lopsided in favor of the Saudis. It was part of the Kuwait-Najd War.
The event was part of the Saudi effort to annex Kuwait and impose a strict religious regime upon them. The Kuwaitis lost the battle after six days, but ultimately the British would intervene and end the war. Kuwait was a British protectorate at the time. Prior to that the Saudis attempted to dictate a peace requiring the eviction of Shias, adoption of Wahhabism, declare the Turks to be heretics, ban smoking, ban prostitution, and destroy the American missionary hospital in Kuwait. The peace was imposed by the British in 1922 and it did not include those provisions, but Kuwait, which was not allowed to participate in the discussions, lost more than 2/3s of its territory.
Sunday, May 17, 2020
The 2020 Special Legislative Session
May 16, 2020
I marked it on our companion blog, but not here, with this item: Today In Wyoming's History: May 15:
2020 The Legislature convened in a special session to deal with Coronavirus Pandemic emergency funding.
It seems, as the Tribune noted today, that the legislature had no more adjourned than the Coronavirus Pandemic went from worrisome to a national crisis, albeit not before some members of the legislature had been exposed to it at the CPAC Conference. Anyhow, it's been known for some time that the legislature would have to reconvene to address funding topics that the massive national relief bill created. Governor Gordon didn't view himself as having the authority to direct the money independently, and he was likely quite right.
So the session started yesterday and it may very well wrap up today.
One really interesting bill that's been introduced is a bill to insulate businesses from liability of people are inadvertently exposed to the virus through them. I wasn't able to pull the bill, but it is farsighted to address this as it seems, sooner or later, any major American event ends up in the courts. Indeed, the coronavirus already has as some states have filed a pointless lawsuit against China over them.
Anyhow, my guess is that this bill will pass.
_________________________________________________________________________________
May 17, 2020
The legislature passed a Coronavirus related budgetary measure yesterday in its special session, which turns out to be just the first of what be at least two special sessions. They're coming back again in June.
A bill that granted immunity from suit and some protection for evicted tenants also passed, although the debate regarding the bill was apparently very heated.
A provision proposing hazard pay for state employees was rejected.
I marked it on our companion blog, but not here, with this item: Today In Wyoming's History: May 15:
2020 The Legislature convened in a special session to deal with Coronavirus Pandemic emergency funding.
It seems, as the Tribune noted today, that the legislature had no more adjourned than the Coronavirus Pandemic went from worrisome to a national crisis, albeit not before some members of the legislature had been exposed to it at the CPAC Conference. Anyhow, it's been known for some time that the legislature would have to reconvene to address funding topics that the massive national relief bill created. Governor Gordon didn't view himself as having the authority to direct the money independently, and he was likely quite right.
So the session started yesterday and it may very well wrap up today.
One really interesting bill that's been introduced is a bill to insulate businesses from liability of people are inadvertently exposed to the virus through them. I wasn't able to pull the bill, but it is farsighted to address this as it seems, sooner or later, any major American event ends up in the courts. Indeed, the coronavirus already has as some states have filed a pointless lawsuit against China over them.
Anyhow, my guess is that this bill will pass.
_________________________________________________________________________________
May 17, 2020
The legislature passed a Coronavirus related budgetary measure yesterday in its special session, which turns out to be just the first of what be at least two special sessions. They're coming back again in June.
A bill that granted immunity from suit and some protection for evicted tenants also passed, although the debate regarding the bill was apparently very heated.
A provision proposing hazard pay for state employees was rejected.
May 17, 1920. More flights.
"Annual May Festival of the Friends Select School, Washington D.C. Held at the Friends Country Club." Pageants like this were common at the time.
It was a day for flight.
The Canadian Air Force, a Canadian air militia that principally served as an airman trainer, came into being. It was not a standing air force and it would very soon be replaced by one, which would be the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1924.
On the same day, KLM, the Dutch airlines which is the oldest airline in the world, made its first flight, that being from London to Amsterdam. There were only two passengers and some mail, but then the flight was made in a leased DH16, which is not a giant aircraft.
Airco Aircraft Transport and Travel DH16
The plane was leased from the British Aircraft Transport and Travel company.
Meanwhile, Carranza was still holding out in Mexico in what the newspapers were calling a "heroic" last stand.
And President Wilson, in a speech, warned that the United States had used 40% of its proven oil reserves and only had 20 years of petroleum production left.
Sunday Morning Scene. Churches of the West: Communion and the State. Wyoming dictates how the faithful will receive and what that reveals about what people understand and don't understand.
Churches of the West: Communion and the State. Wyoming dictates how the...:
Communion and the State. Wyoming dictates how the faithful will receive and what that reveals about what people understand and don't understand.
We've been unusually active here in an unusual way, for this blog, since the COVID 19 Pandemic struck. The reason is obvious. Churches, like every other institution, have been greatly impacted by the Pandemic.
Well, not like every other institution. While its seemingly easy for some to forget, including civil authorities, a church isn't like a restaurant or a bar or something, and particularly depending upon a person's faith, the closure of religious services, and services mean more than just a Sunday gathering, can not only be problematic, but traumatic, and even dire, in their consequences.
This is particularly so for the Apostolic Churches, those being, for those who might not be familiar with the term, the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. The Apostolic Churches have a relationship with their clergy that Protestant Christians do not. Members of the Apostolic faiths depending upon the clergy for administration of the sacraments. Nobody but an ordained cleric, and more specifically in terms of the Apostolic faiths, a cleric who can trace his ordination through a Bishop who was one of the Apostles, can deliver the sacraments. We've gone into this elsewhere and will forgo doing so here, but we'd note that the closure of Catholic and Orthodox Churches during the pandemic is, therefore, uniquely problematic for Apostolic Christians.
Those closures are not, contrary to what has been repeatedly claimed during this crisis, fully unparallelled. Churches were in fact closed during the 1918-1919 Influenza Pandemic, although I do not know for how long. A review of period newspapers demonstrates this to be the case. Therefore, those numerous, mostly heavily Traditional, voices that claim "Catholics have never been denied the sacraments" aren't fully correct when they mean that church doors have not been closed due to disease before. Moreover, while I haven't researched it, I'm fairly confident, just from having run across references here and there, that churches of all types have been closed before due to local pandemics. Indeed, something we've forgotten, as we always view our own times as fully analogous to the past, is that epidemics were once quite common.
While I don't know the situation in the Orthodox Churches, closures have been controversial, as noted, in some Catholic quarters and have resulted in petitions to Bishops to open things back up. At least for the most part those petitions have not resulted in changes, but churches are now actually beginning to open up. Some Protestant churches that closed early on have actually reopened in slight defiance, as they're usually only a little bit ahead of changes in local orders, to state quarantine commands. I think I've read of one Catholic one doing so, and I saw a reference, but didn't follow up on it, to at least one SSPX chapel doing so, although as Catholics know or should know the relationship between the SSPX and the Church is problematic. At least one diocese in New Mexico did reopen public Masses, and while there was concern, it was not in defiance of a closure order.
Which brings us to Wyoming, which is providing an interesting example of how things may develop and how that could be really odd, if not problematic, for Catholics and Orthodox Christians.
The Catholic and Orthodox Churches recognize seven sacraments, those being baptism, Communion (receiving the Holy Eucharist), confirmation, reconciliation (confession of sins), anointing of the sick, marriage and holy orders.
The Seven Sacraments, altarpiece, 1450. Sacraments are depicted being administered, from left to right, are baptism, confirmation, confession, Communion (center panel), holy orders, marriage and anointing of the sick.
The way the sacraments are administered and received is fairly poorly understood by non Catholics as well as Catholics. Baptism, for example, is a sacrament which the Catholic Church recognizes can be conferred by non Catholics upon non Catholics and which remains perfectly valid.* A Christian baptized in another church is never "rebaptized" if the person later becomes Catholic and even laymen can validly baptize a person although the baptism is illicit unless done in a dire emergency.
Somewhat similarly, it requires a priest to perform a valid marriage if one of the parties being married is a Catholic, but due to Canon Law, not due to the nature of marriage. The Church didn't always routinely witness marriages but came to do so to protect the parties, particularly the female party. Now all marriages involving Catholics, with some exceptions, must be performed by a priest, but not all marriages are sacramental, as both parties must be baptized Christians in order for that to occur.
Confirmation in the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church is normally performed by a Bishop, but for the Orthodox and the Eastern Rite its normally administered contemporaneously at baptism by the priest. Confessions can only be heard by a priest. Anointing of the sick can likewise only be done by a priest. Holy Orders, i.e., ordaining of priests and deacons, can only be done by Bishops.
And consecration of the Eucharist can only be done by a priest in the Apostolic Churches. The same position is taken by those churches closely based on the Apostolic Churches, such as the churches in the Anglican Communion and the Lutheran Church.
Communion in the desert during World War Two. This is likely an Anglican priest, give as these are British soldiers.
All of these churches have a very distinct view of what the Eucharist is, and they believe it is the real body and blood of Christ, not a symbol. They don't all agree on what exactly the nature of Host is, as there's at least a difference in understanding between the Apostolic Churches and the Lutheran Church, and determining what various churches in the Anglican Communion believe is a bit difficult at times, but by and large they all agree that only a priest or pastor can consecrate a Host.
What various Protestant dominions, outside the ones we just mentioned, believe about their communions, and most of them have one, varies, but quite a few simply view it as a symbol. Many of these have communion only occasionally as a result, with a much different understanding of what is occuring. And, for that matter, the Apostolic Churches and those closely based on it would regard those other churches as unable to validly consecrate a Host in any event, and therefore likewise agree that in those churches, as opposed to in their church, it is a symbol.
Depiction of a Protestant Communion.
Which brings us to the recent order by the Governor of the State of Wyoming.
Wyoming is opening up its churches, with restrictions. Those provisions are here:
Those are, of course, all the provisions. The one that brings in our post here is 4(g), which states:
Communion shall be served in individual containers.
The really remarkable thing here is that a state order purports to direct how Communion will be received.
I'm not a Canon Lawyer, but this provision strikes me as impossible for the Apostolic Churches to comply with.
At least Catholics are obligated to receive Communion at least once a year, although most receive it much more frequently than that, and some daily. Most adherent Orthodox are like most Catholics and receive it weekly.
There's no earthly way to do this with individual containers.
So effectively, the Governor of Wyoming has forbid Communion.
I'm not a Canon Lawyer, but this provision strikes me as impossible for the Apostolic Churches to comply with.
Indeed, as should be evident by the discussion set out above, Communion, while it happens in every Mass, is a major matter for Apostolic Churches. Apostolic Churches that aren't in communion with each other have rules about the reception of Communion by members of the other churches. I.e., Catholic Churches will allow Orthodox Christians to receive Communion in a Catholic Church, but in most places its discouraged so as to not offend the Orthodox. The Orthodox, in contrast, are very reluctant to allow Catholics to receive Communion in their churches and in some cases simply won't allow it. Neither the Catholic Churches or the Orthodox will allow those outside of the Catholic and Orthodox churches to receive Communion except under specific circumstances.
Recipients of Communion must not be bearing unforgiven mortal sins.
At least Catholics are obligated to receive Communion at least once a year, although most receive it much more frequently than that, and some daily. Most adherent Orthodox are like most Catholics and receive it weekly.
The method of reception of the Holy Eucharist is very prescribed and actually subject to debate among Catholics. For most of recent history Latin Rite Catholics, and those Protestants whose faiths are closely based on the Latin Rite, received Communion on the tongue, delivered by the priest. Up until the 1960s, this usually meant that they received it kneeling at an alter rail with a Communion Plate held below the receiving person to catch the consecrated Host if it was dropped. Following Vatican II, this was changed as alter rails came out of many churches, a sad development in that many were beautiful works of art, and the communicants then received on the tongue by going up to the priest, receiving standing as a rule. Starting at some time in the 70s or 80s, actually as an act of odd disobedience to the rubics, Catholics in many places, including the United States, started receiving in the hand, which has become a matter or heated Trad debate. It is perfectly valid, and as its defenders will note, was the method often used in the early Church, something Trads typically ignore.
Also in the 80s the Latin Rite in North America reintroduced the reception by the parishioners of the consecrated wine, the Precious Blood, although a Catholic is not obligated to receive both forms. Most do.
In the Eastern Rite and the Orthodox the consecrated bread and wine are mixed and then served, with a tiny spoon that is turned to provide the reception, on the communicants tongue.
There's no earthly way to do this with individual containers.
Indeed, individual containers will strike members of Apostolic Churches as the oddest thought. It even suggest that the reception might be taken home, which the Apostolic Churches strictly forbid except in rare specific circumstances.
So effectively, the Governor of Wyoming has forbid Communion.
I don't know what religion Governor Gordon is. He want to an Episcopal boarding school while young, but that may mean less than it at first seems. The assumption that a person going to a denomination's school means they are members is a common one, but its never a completely safe assumption. He and his first wife were married in a Congregationalist Church, which is a church with substantially different theology than the Episcopal Church. I don't know if that means that he became a member of that church, or if he's a non defined Protestant, something that's very common these days, or if he was and remains an Episcopalian.
If he is an Episcopalian, his order certainly creates a problem for the traditional branch of his co-religious. Maybe that doesn't matter to Gordon, who might figure that safety first dictates this approach. Or maybe he doesn't grasp the religious nature of the topic the way that Catholics and Orthodox will. Or maybe he's just signing an order, one of a seemingly endless series these days, that come across his desk addressing a lot of topics in a time of crisis.
In any event, it presents an interesting example of how various Christians don't understand each others faiths, and beyond that, it makes Communion impossible for a body of Christians that takes its Sunday obligation extremely seriously.
Best Post of the Week of May 10, 2020
The best posts of the week of May 10, 2020.
The Reassessors: St. Ignatius of Loyola
The 2020 Election, Part 7
Gathering Storms.
Pandemic
Storm Clouds
The Pandemic and Food, Part Three. A Good, Affordable, Steak
May 16, 1920. The Canonization of Joan d'Arc
The 2020 Special Legislative Session
Rain
The End Is Here. The End Isn't Here. Coronavirus Extremes and really major news
Heavier Rain
Saturday, May 16, 2020
Heavier Rain
After just posting this, this morning:
Lex Anteinternet: Rain: Pennys started out as Gold Rule. This is the first one back in the day, in Kemmerer Wyoming. Earlier this past week we published this:...Comes the news that large Wyoming natural gas producer Ultra Petroleum has also filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
The End Is Here. The End Isn't Here. Coronavirus Extremes and really major news
This past week has been really exemplary in providing countervailing opinions and news.
It started, as already noted, with the massively countervailing opinions on Meet The Press. As we already noted regarding that show:
In the category of not really good news, Meet The Press had its expert physician, Dr. Michael Osterholm, back on last Sunday who once again declared that it was inevitable that the Coronavirus would infect 70% of the human population, a grim assessment. He basically holds out no hope for a vaccine being developed in sufficient time to prevent that from occurring.
The other guests, including one working on a vaccine and one working on a medication that has, in part, the effect of a vaccine on a temporary basis where more optimistic. The latter hoped to have the medication fielded by next Fall. The doctor who was working on a vaccine suggested that next Fall might be possible but reserved declaring that, if all goes well, it would be widely available by that tim
The other guests, including one working on a vaccine and one working on a medication that has, in part, the effect of a vaccine on a temporary basis where more optimistic. The latter hoped to have the medication fielded by next Fall. The doctor who was working on a vaccine suggested that next Fall might be possible but reserved declaring that, if all goes well, it would be widely available by that tim
Later this week a government employed scientist appeared in front of Congress with more grim news.
But then, a day later, it was announced that a pharmaceutical company has a vaccine.
Note what this just stated. Not "developing", they "have".
Now, its not available yet, but its been tested on Rhesus monkeys and it works on them. If it works on those simians, it will almost certainly work on us.
The challenge here, therefore, is to accelerate the testing and manufacturing process as much as possible. The normal testing regime is a lengthy one, not without good reason, but the crisis here doesn't allow for a long process.
I've been really skeptical that the "we won't develop anything in time" folks were wrong. Now they are. Or will be, if we get our act together.
Rain
Pennys started out as Gold Rule. This is the first one back in the day, in Kemmerer Wyoming.
Earlier this past week we published this:
Lex Anteinternet: Storm Clouds: Yesterday we published this: Lex Anteinternet: Gathering Storms. : Economists are openly speculating now that we may be entering a period ...Which took note of this within it:
Lex Anteinternet: Gathering Storms.: Economists are openly speculating now that we may be entering a period of deflation. A drop in petroleum prices combined with a drop in so...Today we have the news that JC Pennys, a company founded in Wyoming, is in bankruptcy.
I have to agree with this Forbes headline, however:
Don’t Blame The Pandemic: JCPenney Goes Bankrupt After Decades-Long Struggle To Reinvent Itself
Pennys has been having trouble for awhile, as anyone who has toured the former retail giant in recent years would know. Still, I hate to see this happen as I did occasionally buy clothing there.
And this isn't unique to Pennys. As Forbes also noted:
The retailer joins Neiman Marcus, J.Crew and Stage Stores in seeking bankruptcy in recent weeks. It also follows in the footsteps of Sears, which filed for bankruptcy protection in 2018.
Which isn't to say that this should be taken lightly. Pennys was a big store, but it wasn't a Walmart. I.e., it was higher quality and this reduces customer options fairly seriously.
And its one more blow in something that's rapidly reaching a depression level economic trend.
May 16, 1920. The Canonization of Joan d'Arc
A doodle of Joan d'Arc by Clément de Fauquembergue on the margin of the protocol of the Parliament of Paris from May 10, 1429, two years prior to her death. Clément de Fauquembergue was the parliamentary registrar and the news of the her victory at Orleans had just reached Paris. The doodle is the only know illustration of her done during her lifetime.
On this day in 1920, Pope Benedict XV canonized Joan d'Arc, the 15th Century peasant girl who lead French forces in a revived effort to recapture lost grounds from the English after hearing voices commanding her to act for the French crown. She ultimately paid for her efforts with her life, being burned at the stake after being falsely convicted of heresy, a charge now universally regarded as absurd and which was itself reversed in 1456.
Even no less of figure as Winston Churchill regarded Joan as a saint. That the illiterate farm girl was able to gain access first to the French crown and then the army in the field commander was and is proof of her divine mission. With the army, she offered advice to its noble commanders which was frequently taken and French fortunes against the English in fact reversed and their army started to do remarkably well.
She is believed to have been born in 1412 in a region of Lorraine that retained loyalty to the French crown during the Hundred Years War, a contest between the Plantagenets, the Norman rulers of England, and the House of Valois, the rulers of France, over who should rule France. The house she grew up in and the village church there still stand. As those who have ready Henry V know, the English long maintained that they should rule both kingdoms and they often regarded France as more important than in England. That contest commenced in 1337 and featured a long running series of campaigns. Trouble in the French royal family had been taken advantage of by Henry V who had been able to greatly expand the amount of English controlled territory in the 1415 to 1417 period. By 1429, when Joan commenced her mission, half of France was controlled directly by England or by French duchies that were loyal to England.
The English commenced a a siege of the FRench city of Orleans in 1428, a town that was a holdout in its region for the French king, Charles VII.
Joan began to have visions in 1425, at which time she was 13 years old. She identified the first figures she saw as St. Michael, St. Catherine and St. Margaret, who told her to drive the English out of France and take the Dauphin to Reims for his consecration. At age 16 she made demands upon a relative to take her to see the crown which were received with scorn. Nonetheless she was taken to Vaucouleurs where she demanded an armed escort to the royal court, which was denied. Returning the following year, she secured the support of two soldiers and their urgings and support she was conducted to the court after she reported the results of a distant battle she had not been at two days prior to messengers arriving to report it. She as then escorted to the court disguised as a male soldier as it involved crossing hostile Burgundian territory. At that time she was 17 years old and Charles VII 26.
She secured permission to travel with the army, which was granted. Everything she used in the mission was donated to her, including the banner that she used. She never used any weapons in battle but rode under her banner. She did, however, gain access to councils of war and was listened to. As noted, the fortunes of the French reversed in this period. The siege of Orleans was broken by the French and Reims taken. The Dauphin was crowned as a result in Reims.
After a brief truce between the English and the French she was captured in battle in 1430 and put on trial for heresy. Heresy being a religious offense, she was tried by English and Burgundian clerics, but the English officers oversaw the trial. The trial was irregular and conducted without religious authority and without the individual commissioned to find evidence against her being able to find any. Her conviction hinged on her having worn male clothing when under escort across hostile Burgundian soil. She was convicted by this tribunal of heresy and burned at the stake in May 31, 1431. Her executioner later greatly feared that his service in this role would result in his damnation.
In spite of her death, the dramatic reversal in French fortunes continued on and by 1450 the English had been pushed off the continent. In fact, French borders surpassed their current ones, as France's resulting borders included what is now part of Belgium, a not surprising result given that Belgium is a multiethnic state.
A regular canonical trial to examine the first one's propriety was convened in 1455 and reversed the conviction in 1456.
She's been a popular figure ever since her death and in any age the nature of her mission is hard to deny. Illiterate and born in a region separated from the retreating French royal lands, she nonetheless managed to convince the French crown and the chivalric leaders of its army that she had a divine mission, something that was aided by her knowledge of things that she could not have known but for her commission. Under her, in spite of the fact that she was a teenage girl with no experience in military matters, French military fortunes permanently reversed.
It's no doubt her youth and gender that have caused her popularity to remain outside of France, but she is a saint whose nature should cause moderns to pause.
And indeed, her mission did have impacts on the religious map of Europe in ways that would not be possible to appreciate at the time of her execution at age 19 in May, 1430. England was pushed off the continent in 1450 by which time Henry VI was king. That same year he was forced to put down a rebellion against the crown in England. In 1533, a mere 83 years later during a period of time in which events often moved slowly, King Henry VIII would take the formerly devout England away from the Church and marry his pregnant mistress Anne Boleyn, bringing the Reformation to England in a personal effort to generate a male successor through a fertile female. The following acts would result in crown licensed theft of church property, murder and decades of strife and war. While France would fall to secularism in 1790, its position up until that time remained stalwart.
She is believed to have been born in 1412 in a region of Lorraine that retained loyalty to the French crown during the Hundred Years War, a contest between the Plantagenets, the Norman rulers of England, and the House of Valois, the rulers of France, over who should rule France. The house she grew up in and the village church there still stand. As those who have ready Henry V know, the English long maintained that they should rule both kingdoms and they often regarded France as more important than in England. That contest commenced in 1337 and featured a long running series of campaigns. Trouble in the French royal family had been taken advantage of by Henry V who had been able to greatly expand the amount of English controlled territory in the 1415 to 1417 period. By 1429, when Joan commenced her mission, half of France was controlled directly by England or by French duchies that were loyal to England.
The English commenced a a siege of the FRench city of Orleans in 1428, a town that was a holdout in its region for the French king, Charles VII.
Joan began to have visions in 1425, at which time she was 13 years old. She identified the first figures she saw as St. Michael, St. Catherine and St. Margaret, who told her to drive the English out of France and take the Dauphin to Reims for his consecration. At age 16 she made demands upon a relative to take her to see the crown which were received with scorn. Nonetheless she was taken to Vaucouleurs where she demanded an armed escort to the royal court, which was denied. Returning the following year, she secured the support of two soldiers and their urgings and support she was conducted to the court after she reported the results of a distant battle she had not been at two days prior to messengers arriving to report it. She as then escorted to the court disguised as a male soldier as it involved crossing hostile Burgundian territory. At that time she was 17 years old and Charles VII 26.
She secured permission to travel with the army, which was granted. Everything she used in the mission was donated to her, including the banner that she used. She never used any weapons in battle but rode under her banner. She did, however, gain access to councils of war and was listened to. As noted, the fortunes of the French reversed in this period. The siege of Orleans was broken by the French and Reims taken. The Dauphin was crowned as a result in Reims.
After a brief truce between the English and the French she was captured in battle in 1430 and put on trial for heresy. Heresy being a religious offense, she was tried by English and Burgundian clerics, but the English officers oversaw the trial. The trial was irregular and conducted without religious authority and without the individual commissioned to find evidence against her being able to find any. Her conviction hinged on her having worn male clothing when under escort across hostile Burgundian soil. She was convicted by this tribunal of heresy and burned at the stake in May 31, 1431. Her executioner later greatly feared that his service in this role would result in his damnation.
In spite of her death, the dramatic reversal in French fortunes continued on and by 1450 the English had been pushed off the continent. In fact, French borders surpassed their current ones, as France's resulting borders included what is now part of Belgium, a not surprising result given that Belgium is a multiethnic state.
A regular canonical trial to examine the first one's propriety was convened in 1455 and reversed the conviction in 1456.
She's been a popular figure ever since her death and in any age the nature of her mission is hard to deny. Illiterate and born in a region separated from the retreating French royal lands, she nonetheless managed to convince the French crown and the chivalric leaders of its army that she had a divine mission, something that was aided by her knowledge of things that she could not have known but for her commission. Under her, in spite of the fact that she was a teenage girl with no experience in military matters, French military fortunes permanently reversed.
It's no doubt her youth and gender that have caused her popularity to remain outside of France, but she is a saint whose nature should cause moderns to pause.
She was not, as some no doubt imagine her, as some sort of proto feminist teenage leader in an age of male patrimony and would not have seen things that way. She was singularly devout and saw her mission as a religious one. She was known to be opposed to the heresies of her era and Islam. She was intensely Catholic and caused the army she lead to be adherent to the faith. The war for control of France changed from a contest between two royal families to a war with religious overtones and even, as viewed from a modern eye, as one involving nationalism in an early form. Her modern fans would do well to take note of her mission and the fact that its impossible to imagine it without crediting the divine voices that she attributed it to.
Blog Mirror: Hiking in Finland; Staying Indoors, Coping With Anxiety & Depression
Staying Indoors, Coping With Anxiety & Depression
In which our Finnish outdoor correspondent asks some thorny questions.
I think the entire times are depressing right now. Unemployment is down, things that we rely upon for our daily routine are closed, except where they aren't. Things are so disorienting. No wonder people are depressed.
And being forced to stay home would be depressing.
It may be where I live, which is very rural. But then Finland is fairly rural too. But I don't get the orders that have required people to stay indoors in all circumstances. Frankly, being out in the hills hiking, hunting, fishing, or skiing strikes me as a much better approach to things than staying the house watching reruns.
But I'm not a physician, so maybe there's just something I'm missing.
Friday, May 15, 2020
The Pandemic and Food, Part Three. A Good, Affordable, Steak
Then news headlines have been full of stories about there being a crisis in the meat industry.
Indeed, I'll be curious how this shakes out. The crisis is frankly not really being deeply pondered, but my prediction is that it'll be used as an excuse by those who promote the deeply unnatural vegetarian and vegan diets as a reason to go unnatural. That shouldn't occur.
Rather, it should be a cry to go local.
So what's going on with meat?
Indeed, I'll be curious how this shakes out. The crisis is frankly not really being deeply pondered, but my prediction is that it'll be used as an excuse by those who promote the deeply unnatural vegetarian and vegan diets as a reason to go unnatural. That shouldn't occur.
Rather, it should be a cry to go local.
So what's going on with meat?
Well, what is not going on is an increase in the price of beef on the hoof. No, what's happened is another example of what we discussed in Part Two of this series, a disruption in the food supply chain.
Indeed, the food distribution system for meat sort of resembles a doubly frayed knot, and that's the problem. Beef or pigs come in from producers all over the country. When they're ready to ship, they're sold to the second tier of the system which usually feeds them out. From there they go, if you will, to the knot, or knots, which are the packers.
Now, a bit of disclosure, which also serves as an example.
My family has a close connection to the packing industry in a couple of ways. Today, we're a producer. We raise cattle. But in the 1920s, 30s and 40s, we were packers.
My grandfather left his home in Dyersville Iowa for the first time around 1914. He was 13.
Dyersville Iowa in 1912, when my grandfather would have been eleven years old and two years before he left school and first left Dyersville.
He left school because he was unhappy with the school itself. That's another story and this isn't the time for it, but that was the reason. He asked his parents if he could leave and go to work, and at that time and place, Dyersville Iowa of 1914 or 1915, they said yes. It wasn't as unusual as it sounds
He went to San Francisco. I don't know why, but he did. And when he got there, he took a job as an office boy for the Cunard Ship Line.
He went to San Francisco. I don't know why, but he did. And when he got there, he took a job as an office boy for the Cunard Ship Line.
That seems really shocking, but the occupation of office boy, which we've touched on before, was as common white collar introductory job at the time. I dealt with it, sort of, here:
As noted in that thread, two of my ancestors held this job and for both of them it was the introductory job into the office. One of them, a maternal great grandfather, worked for the same company the rest of his life, rising to the position of CEO of it. Andrew Carnegie secured his entry into the work world basically the same way.
In my grandfather's case, I know little about his time in San Francisco. One thing that I think would surprise people, however, is that merely being on your own at an early age at the time didn't make you an indigent nor necessarily a candidate for a street gang. Young workers were pretty common and while most of them lived at home, not all of them did. For kids like my grandfather, the Church provided a strong cultural center and likely explains how they were able to live away from home. A good example of the central role of churches in the mid 20th Century can be found in another context in the film Brooklyn and while that film's plot strays to a degree from the likely course of its subjects, the strong central feature of the church, or more accurately Apostolic churches, for those who were members of them, is correct.
At some point, at least if a later obituary is correct, he returned to Dyersville.* I don't know how long he worked for Cunard, but it was long enough that they gave him a framed portrait of a ship when he left. So it must have been awhile. Anyhow, he apparently returned to his large family in Dyersville.
Cunard ship Saxonia. Cunard was a big ship line at the time.
In Dyersville, our family owned a store and some other business interests. The family had come to Dyersville from Westphalia in the 1850s and established a successful general store there. A successor store, a pharmacy, still existed the last time I checked. The general store, being a general store, dealt in all goods, including livestock.
Again, according to the obituary, he came back to Dyersville at some point. I should know more, but the people I'd really have to rely upon for those details, are largely gone now. Anyhow, he left again in 1924. So, some time after 1915 he came back and he worked, most likely at the store with his parents and siblings, in Dyersville. Of note, having been born in October 1901, even though he'd been working since at least 1915, he was still too young to enter the service in the fall of 1918 when the World War One ended. At that time, he'd just turned 17 years old.
In 1924, at age 23, he went to work in Denver Colorado for Cudahy Meat Packing.**
In 1925 he married Katheryn Hennessy, formerly of Leadville, Colorado, but who was now living in Denver with her family as part of a community or relocated Leadville residents. Leadville was already past its prime at the time. They likely met at church, indeed they almost certainly did, and the marriage had an interesting American pattern to it. He was of 100% German Westphalian extraction. She was of 100% Irish extraction. They were both, however, Roman Catholics. They were also unusually the exact same age, 24.
Victor Colorado in 1900, the year before my grandmother was born there. Victor is very near Leadville.
His role there wasn't on the killing floor. Rather, he went right into the office at age 23, which made sense as he already had office and business experience. It seems shocking to us now, but this sort of thing wasn't unusual at the time. He was familiar with business as he'd worked as an office boy, an established entry level white collar job, and he'd worked in a family business.
He stayed there, rising up on the Denver operation, until 1937, in what amounted to a transfer, and worked for Swift Packing in Scottsbluff Nebraska (the plant was actually in nearby Gering).*** At some time after that he became interested in the packing plant in Casper Wyoming, which he bought in the early 1940s. It's not exactly clear but it seems he may have bought it and operated it in Casper for a time before moving the family up from Scottsbluff, likely because it was a very major expenditure. Be that as it may, the family had moved up to Casper during World War Two. My father had recollection of the home front in the region from both Scottsbluff Nebraska and Casper. To complete the family side of the story, in 1949 he died at age 48, having just sold the creamery that he also bought.
This is the former packing plant as it looks today. It didn't look like this in the 1940s. Indeed, the structures on the right, in this photo, were the original structures from the 1920s and were brick. After the packing plant closed this property was purchased by a welding company which experienced a fire on the site a couple of decades ago. It's current appearance reflects its time as a welding shop.
The back of the old packing house. Packing houses were always built on rail frontage as cattle and beef were principally shipped by rail at the time.
The packing plant that he purchased had been built in 1921 by another family and it was also a family operation. They were quickly up and running and marketed all meat products of all types, as well as related products like lard, directly to stores and directly.
The location was a logical one. Casper was dead center in the the livestock range of Wyoming and also the center of business activity for the central part of the state. The packing house took cattle in all over from central Wyoming and likewise marketed it all over as well.
In order to do that, of course, it had not only a plant, but associated farm ground as well. Packing houses have to feed out cattle, and the company did.****
The original owners, as already noted, sold it after operating it for about twenty years, to my grandfather. We operated it, and acquired a creamery, until the late 1940s, when death intervened to stop it. At that time my father had just graduated from high school and was in junior college. His death put the family in a financial crisis of sorts that they adjusted to by selling the plant.
The plant itself continued in operation until the 1970s. By that time the massive consolidation of the packing industry was well under way. In its later years it made only Slim Jims, a beef stick product of General Mills. While I was never really clear on what the story was, I know that as a child there were family grumblings about how the new owners were running it, with the though generally being that it wasn't being run well. Having said that, as my father once explained to me, packing houses actually operate on a small economic margin, or at least they did. So it was impossible after a time for local packing houses to compete against the consolidating national ones.
And that's a huge problem.
It's a huge problem economically, and as it turns out, it's a huge problem in a time of crisis, such as this one.
In the novel Red Storm Rising Tom Clancy imagined a third world war breaking out between the NATO powers and the Soviet Union. The war was precipitated, in the novel, by an Islamist engineer setting off a devastating terrorist attack inside of an oil gathering facility in the southern Soviet Union. Clancy, whose novels were always extremely well researched, theorized that the consolidation of petroleum gathering infrastructure within the USSR made it vulnerable to a singular attack such as the one he imagined. Clancy, being who he was, was probably correct on that. Clancy went on to imagine that the attack largely took out Soviet oil production and caused the Soviets to gamble on an attack on the West before oil starvation put them in a position that would put them on their knees to the west.
The irony of this is that the American corporate capitalist infrastructure on some thing is similarly vulnerable and, as we've learned since the 1990s, not only to terrorism. Indeed, so far the United States has escaped a devastating attack of that type and its frankly is probably largely immune from an attack disrupting the economy as the American economy is so vast and its infrastructure so large. But it isn't immune from an attack of much larger, natural, forces.
We learned that, or should have, form Gulf hurricanes of the past two decades that had the impact of massively disrupting the petroleum refining infrastructure. The US still refines petroleum in the nation's interior, but a massive shift has occurred in the system since the 1970s. Up until then, petroleum tended to be refined near where it was produced as crude. Starting with the 1970s, however, it started to be produced in giant refineries along the Gulf coast. Now most of it is refined there and local refineries are basically hanging on until their practical extended life ceases. The petroleum industry doesn't build refineries in Wyoming, Nebraska, or Oklahoma anymore, it builds them in Texas on the Gulf.
Indeed, just looking around will reveal that. Casper Wyoming was the home of three refineries up until the 1970s. Now it has one. In the 1940s, and perhaps later, Laramie had a refinery. That's long in the past. Midwest and Glenrock once had refineries. The same story could be played out all over Wyoming and the oil producing regions of the US.
Petroleum isn't meat, of course, but the analogy is interesting similar. Natrona County Wyoming had four refineries, three in Casper and one in Midwest, as the oil was produced here and in neighboring counties. It still is, but now it has only one. That oil is going elsewhere to be refined.
Likewise, Casper had a meat packing plant as the beef was raised here. It still is. Now that beef is going elsewhere.
And hence the infrastructure weakness. When hurricanes damage Gulf refineries it hurts the entire nation.
And when a viral storm hits the United States and impacts a meat packing plant, that's now the case for the US as well.
This need not be the case at all.
All of the constituents to feed out and pack beef that existed in the 1940s in Wyoming and Nebraska still do. Near Casper Wyoming, where we've been discussing, there are still not only many ranches, but there's also production agriculture to the west of the city. Scottsbluff, which we've also been discussing, remains even more ideally suited for packing.
And if that was the case, that local packer would employ locals at wages that are better than Walmart wages. Not only people in the plant either, but truck drivers and professionals whose work would be ancillary to the plant. Indeed, drivers, lawyers, doctors accountants, etc. etc.
And farmers too, in an era in which farm ground is constantly under threat from development.
And yet the nearest meat packing plant today is the Monfort plant in Greeley Colorado, which belongs to the Brazilian ag production giant JBS. That ownership alone says something, and not something good either.
When my grandfather owned the local packing plant, two Marine Corps veterans came home from World War Two and founded a local grocery store, something else that's a thing of the past. When they did that, they found they were short of cash and couldn't stock their meat counter. My grandfather provided them the meat on credit. I.e., he let them pay for it when they later could, which they did. They were so grateful for it that they mentioned it on a radio interview decades later and repeatedly mentioned to me whenever I happened to stop in the store.
A big chain packer isn't going to do that.
*As this story developed, he died in his 40s and perhaps because of that I not only never knew him, or my other grandfather who also died before I was born, but most of the information I have about him was from my father and his siblings. Perhaps because of his early death, which occured on the birthday of one of my aunts, they did not speak a good deal about their early lives. They did some, but not as much as a person normally does. I think the event was simply too painful.
When they did, it tended to come in the form of singular stories that were unlikely to be repeated again, and their focus varied by the teller. Stories told by my aunts were on different topics than my father. Details on their grandparents were extremely rare, and if they were told were much, much more likely to be about their grandparents in Denver, perhaps because my grandmother of that line lived much longer than my grandfather. Indeed, they were more likely to speak about their Colorado grandparents and even some Colorado relatives than their early lives and father. This began to change once they were in their fifties, but not before then.
This being the case, a few details here are pulled from an obituary, which includes a few details that I wasn't previously aware of. Knowing that obituaries are always pulled together from details provided by a family under stress, I wonder if some of them are in error. For example, the obituary relates that he left Cudahy in 1938, but I know that it was 1937. The obituary also relates that he purchased the local packing plant in 1945, but another one pulled from Nebraska suggests that it was actually in the early 1940s and he moved the family up a bit later, probably due to economic reasons. I know that he was working in Scottsbluff in the early years of World War Two but I also know that the family was well established in Casper by 1945, and I know that the plant had World War Two era contracts and regulations it had to adhere to, so I suspect the plant was likely purchased around 1943 at hte latest but that it took some time so save the money to buy a house in Casper and that likely came in 1944 or 1945.
The information that he was in Dyersville at age 23 and moved from there is solely taken from the obituary which omits any reference to his having lived in San Francisco. I suspect that at the time of his death San Francisco, which he certainly wasn't ashamed of given his keeping of the Cunard photograph in his office, was something that was simply omitted as too difficult to accurately relate at the time of his death. However, I cannot discount that the age of "23" was an error for "13", which may have well have occured at the newspaper obit printing level.
**Cudahy was actually Armour Cudahy, with Armour being famous for meat products in other contexts, including the famous early 20th Century military "Armour Rations". It had been founded in Omaha in 1887. In 1981 Cudahy was purchased by Bar S Foods. It was subsequently sold to Mexican packer Sigma Aliamentos in 2010.
***The Gering plant was recently demolished. It had been out of use since the early 2000s.
****Today that farm ground has all been developed as part of the Town of Evansville Wyoming.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Related Threads:
And that's a huge problem.
It's a huge problem economically, and as it turns out, it's a huge problem in a time of crisis, such as this one.
In the novel Red Storm Rising Tom Clancy imagined a third world war breaking out between the NATO powers and the Soviet Union. The war was precipitated, in the novel, by an Islamist engineer setting off a devastating terrorist attack inside of an oil gathering facility in the southern Soviet Union. Clancy, whose novels were always extremely well researched, theorized that the consolidation of petroleum gathering infrastructure within the USSR made it vulnerable to a singular attack such as the one he imagined. Clancy, being who he was, was probably correct on that. Clancy went on to imagine that the attack largely took out Soviet oil production and caused the Soviets to gamble on an attack on the West before oil starvation put them in a position that would put them on their knees to the west.
The irony of this is that the American corporate capitalist infrastructure on some thing is similarly vulnerable and, as we've learned since the 1990s, not only to terrorism. Indeed, so far the United States has escaped a devastating attack of that type and its frankly is probably largely immune from an attack disrupting the economy as the American economy is so vast and its infrastructure so large. But it isn't immune from an attack of much larger, natural, forces.
Giant Gulf coast refinery at Port Arthur, Texas. The Gulf Coast from Houston in Port Arthur is practically one giant refinery.
Indeed, just looking around will reveal that. Casper Wyoming was the home of three refineries up until the 1970s. Now it has one. In the 1940s, and perhaps later, Laramie had a refinery. That's long in the past. Midwest and Glenrock once had refineries. The same story could be played out all over Wyoming and the oil producing regions of the US.
Petroleum isn't meat, of course, but the analogy is interesting similar. Natrona County Wyoming had four refineries, three in Casper and one in Midwest, as the oil was produced here and in neighboring counties. It still is, but now it has only one. That oil is going elsewhere to be refined.
Likewise, Casper had a meat packing plant as the beef was raised here. It still is. Now that beef is going elsewhere.
And hence the infrastructure weakness. When hurricanes damage Gulf refineries it hurts the entire nation.
And when a viral storm hits the United States and impacts a meat packing plant, that's now the case for the US as well.
This need not be the case at all.
All of the constituents to feed out and pack beef that existed in the 1940s in Wyoming and Nebraska still do. Near Casper Wyoming, where we've been discussing, there are still not only many ranches, but there's also production agriculture to the west of the city. Scottsbluff, which we've also been discussing, remains even more ideally suited for packing.
And if that was the case, that local packer would employ locals at wages that are better than Walmart wages. Not only people in the plant either, but truck drivers and professionals whose work would be ancillary to the plant. Indeed, drivers, lawyers, doctors accountants, etc. etc.
And farmers too, in an era in which farm ground is constantly under threat from development.
And yet the nearest meat packing plant today is the Monfort plant in Greeley Colorado, which belongs to the Brazilian ag production giant JBS. That ownership alone says something, and not something good either.
When my grandfather owned the local packing plant, two Marine Corps veterans came home from World War Two and founded a local grocery store, something else that's a thing of the past. When they did that, they found they were short of cash and couldn't stock their meat counter. My grandfather provided them the meat on credit. I.e., he let them pay for it when they later could, which they did. They were so grateful for it that they mentioned it on a radio interview decades later and repeatedly mentioned to me whenever I happened to stop in the store.
A big chain packer isn't going to do that.
When they did, it tended to come in the form of singular stories that were unlikely to be repeated again, and their focus varied by the teller. Stories told by my aunts were on different topics than my father. Details on their grandparents were extremely rare, and if they were told were much, much more likely to be about their grandparents in Denver, perhaps because my grandmother of that line lived much longer than my grandfather. Indeed, they were more likely to speak about their Colorado grandparents and even some Colorado relatives than their early lives and father. This began to change once they were in their fifties, but not before then.
This being the case, a few details here are pulled from an obituary, which includes a few details that I wasn't previously aware of. Knowing that obituaries are always pulled together from details provided by a family under stress, I wonder if some of them are in error. For example, the obituary relates that he left Cudahy in 1938, but I know that it was 1937. The obituary also relates that he purchased the local packing plant in 1945, but another one pulled from Nebraska suggests that it was actually in the early 1940s and he moved the family up a bit later, probably due to economic reasons. I know that he was working in Scottsbluff in the early years of World War Two but I also know that the family was well established in Casper by 1945, and I know that the plant had World War Two era contracts and regulations it had to adhere to, so I suspect the plant was likely purchased around 1943 at hte latest but that it took some time so save the money to buy a house in Casper and that likely came in 1944 or 1945.
The information that he was in Dyersville at age 23 and moved from there is solely taken from the obituary which omits any reference to his having lived in San Francisco. I suspect that at the time of his death San Francisco, which he certainly wasn't ashamed of given his keeping of the Cunard photograph in his office, was something that was simply omitted as too difficult to accurately relate at the time of his death. However, I cannot discount that the age of "23" was an error for "13", which may have well have occured at the newspaper obit printing level.
**Cudahy was actually Armour Cudahy, with Armour being famous for meat products in other contexts, including the famous early 20th Century military "Armour Rations". It had been founded in Omaha in 1887. In 1981 Cudahy was purchased by Bar S Foods. It was subsequently sold to Mexican packer Sigma Aliamentos in 2010.
***The Gering plant was recently demolished. It had been out of use since the early 2000s.
****Today that farm ground has all been developed as part of the Town of Evansville Wyoming.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Related Threads:
The Pandemic and Food, Part Two.
The Pandemic And The Table, Part 1.
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